1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing apparatus, a data processing method, and a data processing system that allow a potable music reproducing device to search for a song.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, portable reproducing devices that receive song data from Compact Discs (CDs) as music information sources and that allow the users to enjoy listening to music have been widely used. With the improvement of audio compression technology, a very large number of songs for example several hundred songs or several thousand songs of song data can be stored to a medium such as a Compact Disc-Recordable (CD-R) disc, a semiconductor memory, a small hard disc, or the like. The audio compression technology is for example Moving Picture Experts Group audio layer 3 (MP3), Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC3, registered trademark), Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding 3 plus (ATRAC3 plus, registered trademark), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Windows Media Audio (WMA, registered trademark).
Song data can be obtained from commercial CDs. In addition, using Electric Music Distribution (EMD), the user can obtain a wide variety of song data. The user selects and reproduces a desired song from many songs of song data recorded on a medium such as a CD-R disc on a portable reproducing device for example a portable CD player. When the user selects a desired song, he or she normally searches for the desired song corresponding to a song name and an artist name that are displayed on a liquid crystal display section of the main body of the player or a liquid crystal display section of a remote controller. In other words, while the user is watching data on the liquid crystal display, he or she searches for his or her desired song with indicators of a song name, an artist name, and so forth that he or she is watching.
The following patent document 1 describes a multi-CD player that pre-stores a part, for example the beginning, of each song of song data of each CD in a high speed memory and that has a scanning mode that allows the player to reproduce a part of the pre-stored song data at high speed. With the scanning mode, the user can quickly select a CD to reproduce song data. [Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-123463